Civil society, is based on voluntarism and predicated on giving the widest possible latitude to the individual so that he has sovereignty over his own life, so long as he respects the equal rights of others in society.
It is in civil society--the realm of liberty--that mankind flourishes. It is from civil society that industry, civility, rectitude, science, and prosperity arise.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

A differentiation fed them by the administration

John F. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971: "We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration." John F. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Syria, September 3, 2013: "So let me be clear: President Obama is not asking America to go to war. And I say that sitting next to two men -- Secretary Hagel and Chairman Dempsey -- who know what war is. Senator McCain knows what war is. They know the difference between going to war and what President Obama is requesting now. We all agree, there will be no American boots on the ground."

Quotations

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. -- Tacitus (a Roman Senator) 68 AD

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. -- Thomas Jefferson 1788

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. -- Thomas Jefferson 1800

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. -- Thomas Jefferson

The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else. -- Frédéric Bastiat 1848

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. -- Frédéric Bastiat 1848

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare. -- Howard E. Kershner

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. -- Friedrich A. Hayek

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions…. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. -- Friedrich A. Hayek 1960

There is simply no other choice than this: either abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way. -- Ludwig von Mises 1962

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. -- Barry Goldwater 1964

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. -- Ronald Reagan

Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. -- Ronald Reagan 1981

Free people are NOT equal and equal people are NOT free. -- Lawrence Reed

Truth is treason in the empire of lies. -- Ron Paul

The following six quotations are from Milton Friedman:

1. A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

2. If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment.

3. One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

4. Most economic fallacies derive ... from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

5. Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. ... A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society.

6. Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.